Chapter 660 Consequences
"Say, have you ever tried to douse the dread sapling with boiling water or vinegar?" Shiro asked.
"We have tried boiling water but it seems resistant to it." Dimos replied.
"As for vinegar, why would you use a food preservative? Plus, it's also used to tend wounds so I don't see any point of pouring vinegar on the sapling." He shook his head.
"You see, there is something called a herbicide and while I haven't researched about herbicides that preserve the environment, I do know ones that damage it. They mostly involve using salt, boiling water, some dish soap or vinegar which contains Acetic acid. They're extremely helpful in killing plant life so I'm thinking if we were to recreate a herbicide using divinities, we should be able to kill the dread sapling. The only problem with this is that it'll damage the surrounding plant life. However, seeing as though it's already draining the surroundings, I don't see why we shouldn't use this method." Shiro explained with a smile.
"I don't understand what you mean by herbicide so care to explain how it works?" Dimos asked. He was curious about where she got this knowledge but he didn't care right now. The most important task right now is to deal with the sapling.
"It's just something that's designed to kill plants. It takes a while to produce but if we have people with divinities pertaining harvest and inducing growth in certain organisms then we might be able to create some of this to kill the sapling." Shiro smiled.
"I'm interested, young spirit. Can you show me a demonstration of this herbicide that you speak of? I may be able to find some spirits to help you in this cause." The dryad smiled softly as she appeared next to Shiro.
"So you've been watching. Sure, I'll show you but it takes a bit of time and effort to make the second one. We can either let it kill the sapling on its own or we can ignite it and cause a giant fire. The only problem with igniting it is that there's a high chance that the town will be destroyed with how much we may need." Shiro explained.
"That's rather… extreme." Dimos raised his eyebrow.
"Well it's a magical plant that can destroy the world. I'm not sure a homemade herbicide can kill it easily." Shiro shrugged.
"Are you able to get me some salt and boiling water?" Shiro asked as Dimos shook his head.
"Salt is extremely expensive and if you're thinking about getting a lot to kill the sapling, I'm afraid it'll cost a fortune which is something we don't have." He sighed.
"Ah right, salt is expensive when you can't harvest a lot of it." Shiro muttered with a frown.
"That's fine. We'll have to go with the acid route or the explosion route then. The second one will need someone with a fire divinity so that I can make sure the explosion is magical just in case the dread sapling is resistant to non magical methods.
"For the acid route, we'll be needing a lot of vinegar since it contains Acetic acid. Unfortunately, it only contains around 5 to 6% and I didn't read up on how to make Acetic acid which is annoying. BUT, that is enough to kill most plants so if we magical it up with some harvest divinity, it should heavily damage the sapling and hopefully kill it. If not, we'll go with the explosion route. We'll need to shred a lot of wood finely into dust and have someone with the wind divinity to spread it to the crater. Once that happens, the person with the fire divinity should send a fireball or something into it and it'll react like a giant bomb, blowing up the place and the sapling with it. And if it still doesn't die, then we should probably just go into combat as it should be heavily damaged at that point." Shiro explained.
"How would wood dust cause an explosion? I know wood sets on fire but I don't see why it would explode." The dryad furrowed her brows.
"Think of it like this, a large piece of wood burns over time right?" Shiro smiled.
"Yes."
"If you reduce that piece of wood, the time to burn decreases right?"
"Yes it does."
"If I shred wood into fine grains of dust, it takes an instant for it to catch on fire and burn up right?" Shiro grinned.
At this point, Dimos understood what she was leading up to and couldn't help but widen his eyes at the consequences of such actions should it be performed at a large scale.
"If we fill up the entire crater town with tiny grains of wood dust that floats through the air thanks to the person with a wind divinity, a single speck of fire would cause the entire place to explode as each grain will set each other on fire in an instant. If you send a large fireball in, the explosion would be amplified, causing a massive amount of damage to the surroundings and likewise, the dread sapling itself. In other words, rather than damaging the wood overtime when it is a large piece, shredding it to pieces allows for all the burning to take place in a single moment, hence its power." Shiro chuckled as the dryad stayed silent.
"Where did you even get this knowledge? If it was used in a war, it could cause mass amounts of damage to the enemy army." Dimos frowned.
"Don't worry, this was something I found written by an unknown person who had already died. If this knowledge was to spread, do you think no one would have tried to use it?" Shiro smiled.
"But if you use it now, this knowledge will become common and conflicts will escalate in collateral damage."
"Hence why we'll need to find trustworthy people to carry this plan out. Plus, it's only a backup plan in case the acid route doesn't work." Shiro shrugged.
"You seemed to have forgotten an important point." The dryad shook her head.
"And that is?"
"What do you think would happen to everyone who will lose their homes regardless of which method you use." The dryad asked as Shiro stayed silent.
At the moment where her main problem was taking care of the dread sapling, she had forgotten about the consequences that her actions could bring. Her main goal for this was to help the people to begin with but if she used such violent methods, the town would be destroyed anyways. The acid route would destroy the land, making it hard to grow crops while the explosion could completely reform the area, destroying all of their homes in the process.
Both options would bring about the same result as the dread sapling.
Frowning slightly, Shiro stayed silent as she may need to reconsider her choices.
This kind of thing had happened before but her family and friends had always taken care of the aftermath for her. Examples would be what happened in Tokyo and what happened to their family mansion.
"How about I go talk to the leader of the town and inform him of the options. I'll need to do some research on the tree to determine how close the sapling is to the next stage. If we have time, I'll be able to call for some reinforcements so that we can kill it now without harming the town too much. If it's close to the third stage, I'll have to call more reinforcements and if they can't deal with it, we'll go with your plan ok?" Dimos smiled and patted Shiro's shoulder.
"Mn. I'll rest in the forest since it's good for me and I'm already used to it. You should head back to the town." Shiro nodded as she wanted some time to think by herself. She needed to remember that her methods were too violent and that the consequences of her actions may or may not cause more harm than the problem she's trying to solve. It'll be akin to fighting fire with fire and the result is everything turning to ash.
"Well don't worry about it too much and rest well for tonight. I'll bring you some breakfast tomorrow since you can't enter town with the sapling trying to kill you." Dimos chuckled and made his way back to town.
Watching his figure walking away in the distance, Shiro stayed silent and sighed.
Standing up on her branch, she jumped down and made her way deeper into the forest so that she could find a proper branch to sleep on.